Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/308

This page has been validated.
294
BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY

As soon as the news of her death reached Rome, the academicians, called Infecondi, who had formerly admitted her of their society, made odes in memory of her, and epitaphs without number. They celebrated likewise a funeral solemnity in her honour, in the college of the Barnabite fathers, where the academy usually assembled. This solemnity was conducted with the highest pomp and magnificence; and a description of it published at Paris in the year 1686, dedicated to the most serene republic of Venice. The whole city flocked together to see it; and one of the academicians made a funeral oration, in which, with all the pomp of Italian eloquence, he expatiated on the great and valuable qualities of the deceased; saying, that Helena Lucretia Cornaro had triumphed over three monsters, who were at perpetual war with her sex, viz. luxury, pride, and ignorance.

It does not appear that this lady was the author of any literary productions.

Female Worthies.


CORNELIA,

Of the family of the Scipios, and mother of the Gracchi, so excelled in knowledge and the study of the sciences, that she was generally praised by the most learned men, for her probity, wisdom, and philosophy, lectures on for which she read publicly in Rome. Quintilian says, "We are much bound to the mother Cornelia for the eloquence of the Gracchi, whose unparalleled learning, in her excellent epistles,

she